Death Canyon

by David Riley Bertsch

Jake walked on the tree trunk as long as possible to avoid the steaming ground. When the trunk narrowed to the point that using it was impossible, he stayed on miniature hummocks of high ground and rocks.

  Back on the road, Noelle ignored his request and was looking around the scene, trying to formulate her own idea for a way out.

  Looks like Jake is right, she thought as she looked at the opposite end of the tree. There around the root ball, dense trees made passage impossible.

  She went back to the truck, which now had a few sinewy clouds of sulfurous steam twisting around it. The road was warming and small fractures were silently forming. The earth shivered ever so slightly.

  Night was just around the corner. The evening light was a cool blue, and the mangled trees were silhouetted in black against it. Noelle got in the truck and threw on the headlights to illuminate Jake’s path back to her. The cylindrical beams of light cast an even more peculiar mood on the scene. Although the evening mountain air was crisp, the emerging gasses lent their share of humidity and heat.

  Jake looked around and squinted through the dusk when he reached the end of the pine. It would be tough going; the ground was already soft from spring moisture, and again, it was hard to tell how deep and strong the earth was at any given point. There was no way to know whether it could support the weight of a person, let alone that of a large vehicle. At any time, the truck could get bogged down in mud or worse—the mass of the vehicle might break through the earth’s crust, exposing Jake and Noelle to God knows what lay beneath.

  Boiling water and steam or two-thousand-degree lava.

  There was a path, though—a small swath through the still standing pines that would barely accommodate the width of the pickup. Assuming the ground there was firm, Noelle’s four-wheel drive would have no trouble navigating the route. It was their only option.

  He hopscotched on the rocks and walked back down the tree’s trunk to the road. Jake shielded his eyes from the headlights and approached the truck.

  “I think we’ve got a chance getting around that way,” he said. “It’s hard to say how much weight this crust can hold, though. If we get stuck and have to leave the car, we could be in trouble.”

  “In a few minutes, we’re gonna be in trouble here.” Noelle pointed to the scatter of now-widening steam vents and crevices in the road. Again the earth shivered and the asphalt belched out steam.

  “Okay.” Jake thought for a second. “I want you to walk over, though. There’s no reason for us both to put ourselves at risk. I’ll see you on the other side.”

  Before Jake could put the transmission into drive, Noelle clamped her hand over the keys where they rested in the ignition. “No way. If we’re gonna try this, I’m driving.”

  “No. I don’t think—”

  She interrupted before he could finish. “It’s my truck, Jake. I’m more familiar with it. I’m driving the damn thing.” The look on her face told Jake that it wasn’t worth arguing over.

  “Fine. But I’m going with you.”

  Jake and Noelle exited the car and switched positions, Noelle getting in the driver’s seat. Jake had no idea what he could do to help if the car started to bog, but he wanted to be there to try. The thought of standing idle while Noelle struggled—maybe to her death—to get the car through the steaming swamp was too much for him to handle.

  “I’d go in with some speed,” Jake told her as she put the car in drive and cranked the wheel to the left, toward their way out. “You know, I mean, momentum is your friend. The faster we can go through this junk, the better.”

  “Are we in driver’s ed?”

  “Sorry, can’t help it.”

  Jake grabbed the molded plastic handle on the ceiling of the cab and held on. Noelle pulled up to the gap in the trees and scoped out her planned route. She reversed the truck a short ways to put a runway between the truck and the unstable ground ahead.

  Dropping the truck into drive, Noelle accelerated deliberately toward the opening in the trees. She turned the dial on the dash to “4wd-hi.” Then with a quick pull on the wheel, the truck bounced off the road’s man-made plateau and down a few inches onto the forest floor. Jake and Noelle looked at each other for a moment as the truck cruised through the first short stretch of the route with ease.

  Around them, vents in the earth released more and more steam, and small, bubbling hot springs were showing up in the low-lying hummocks. Every so often one of these springs would spout a fountain of steam and water a few feet into the air. The rumbles coming from the earth were becoming constant. As Stevenson predicted, the energy fueling the newly lifeless geysers to the south was finding new ways to run its course. The area around Jake and Noelle was becoming a new geyser basin.

  Pace is good. Traction is good. Keep moving.

  Noelle kept her eyes well ahead, focused on potential obstacles forty feet or more in front of the car. She wanted to anticipate any blocks early so she could avoid them without losing too much speed. The truck was fast approaching the tree, where its delicate upper branches were shaking slightly with the earth’s trembles.

  Just like Jake said, there wasn’t much space for the truck; the limbs, some as much as five inches in diameter, reached out over the most viable portion of the morass. She could go far left to avoid them, but the terrain was even more treacherous there.

  Noelle decided to force the vehicle through the mass of branches. She accelerated toward them, hoping the extra momentum would help her break through. Jake was startled at her choice—the direction and acceleration—but he gave her one quick look and realized her intentions. He gripped the interior handle more firmly in preparation for impact.

  The first few branches bent under the force of the big engine rather easily. The tree was still green, so rather than snapping, the limbs folded as they smeared across the windshield before flinging back to life behind the truck. As they ran across the roof, they screeched and scratched like fingernails on a chalkboard. If they lived, Noelle was going to get flak for the damage to the paint job.

  The branches were becoming thicker and thicker as the vehicle worked its way to the center of the organism. No longer just scraping, the wood met the metal with dull thumps. The truck began bucking as its engine struggled to push through the resistance.

  With their thicker diameters, the bigger branches tore and cracked when they were overwhelmed by force. With a dull thud, a particularly large branch smacked the windshield, causing a spiderweb crack to appear. Damn.

  Jake was trying to think of escape options should they stall out. The branches nearby were not strong enough to support their individual weights. If they were forced to leave the truck stuck in the boiling bog, they wouldn’t likely be able to get to the main trunk without touching the ground. The very ground that was seizing and steaming and bubbling with heat below them.

  The truck was slowing despite Noelle’s best efforts. She wondered if the tires could take it. Noelle wanted to punch it, push the engine to its max, and hope for the best, but she knew this might make the wheels lose traction or, worse yet, cause a flat. Instead, she accelerated deliberately through the mess.

  Wham! Another thick branch slammed into the passenger side of the car, swatting the side-view mirror away from its moorings like a papier-mâché replica. Jake looked back to see the mirror flying through the air as if weightless.

  Then, without warning, the truck stopped, engine still running but going nowhere. Noelle stood up as much as she could in the cabin to look past the hood and see what obstacle had blocked them. She couldn’t see anything. The limb that had swept the mirror off the truck was now behind them, its damage done. She tried the gas pedal again. The engine revved and whined, but to no avail.

  “What is it? Why aren’t we moving?!” Noelle shouted. She was trying to look out the closed window to see what the obstacle was.

  “Hold on.” Jake opened the passenger side, letting in a rush of hot air and steam. He poked his head and shoulders through the now open door,
but carefully left his feet on the floor of the cabin. He planted his hand on the roof to steady himself. The metal was warm enough to cook on. It burned him. He pulled his sleeve down to act as a barrier between his hand and the hot steel. After just a short moment, Jake pulled himself back into the truck and closed the door.

  He was panting from the heat. “It’s getting hot out there.” He shook the burning sensation out of his left hand. “There’s a rock ledge just in front of your tires. Fourteen, maybe sixteen inches high. Almost up to the bumper. No way around it.”

  “Well, we’ll have to keep trying to get over it, then.” Noelle put the transmission in reverse and backed up a few feet. Looking over her right shoulder, she continued until a tree branch impeded her progress. She stopped and put the truck into drive.

  “Here we go, cowboy.” Noelle pressed hard on the gas, pinning it to the floor. The truck jumped forward. When it reached the ledge, its front bumper scraped against the surface of the rock. The front wheels hit the corner of the ledge, the force strong enough that the air between the tires’ rubber and the wheels compressed. Jake and Noelle felt the wheels themselves slam the rock. Noelle backed off the accelerator at precisely the wrong moment and the truck rolled backward off the rock. Their efforts had displaced the earth and dug them deeper into the trough below the rock.

  “We’ve got two more chances, Noelle, tops. When you get the front tires up there on the ledge, keep on the gas. They’ll catch traction and pull us up. Be careful not to pop the tires on impact.”

  “Okay.” Easier said than done. Noelle was already looking through the rear windshield, gaining as much ground as she could for a run-up.

  Before putting her car into gear, Noelle closed her eyes for a short moment and said nothing. This was as close to prayer as she had ever ventured.

  Shaking all other thoughts from her mind, she dropped the car down past drive and into first gear. This time, Noelle approached at a slightly slower pace, but accelerated to get the vehicle to climb up on the rock. The bumper scraped again, more harshly than the first time.

  Somehow, the truck kept moving forward. It bounced hard when its wheels hit the corner of the rock. Noelle punched it. The front wheels slipped for a second on the smooth top of the rock, then they engaged, pulling the truck up and over. The car bucked just slightly as the unweighted rear wheels bounced over the ledge.

  The truck crashed through the last few branches. Noelle steered it over and around the remaining rocks and then up the short, steep grade and back onto the road. She stood on the brakes and the truck skidded to a stop on the dust. They both took a deep breath.

  Then the relief of the moment overwhelmed Noelle. She laughed as she put the gearshift back into park. “Okay, you can drive the rest of the way.” Noelle held her hands out in front of her and Jake could see them shaking. They switched seats again and headed north.

  It was dark now. In the forest on either side of the road, Noelle saw the occasional smoldering fire. Each one illuminated its own surroundings: pine boughs, branches, and ascending smoke. The fires looked like campfires, as if the park were filled with cheerful campers. In reality the area was closed and nobody was there. Noelle longed for normalcy.

  Jake drove on, toward the epicenter.

  32

  CONTROL ROOM, THE HOT ROCK TRACT. THE SAME AFTERNOON.

  Jan was pacing back and forth. Intermittent tremors caused him to stop, tense up, and look fearfully out the windows. Then he inevitably would return to his pacing. The men had promised him that they would get the group together and have a conference call. That was over an hour ago.

  Why haven’t they called? Are they abandoning me out here?

  His nerves made it necessary to evacuate his bladder more often than normal, and he walked toward the door to head to the bathroom. When he stepped out into the hallway, the phone finally rang. Jan rushed back to the desk and answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Jan, it’s me.” A deep voice. “Everybody is here with me. I want you to explain the situation just like you did to me earlier. We are all short on time, so make it quick.”

  Make it quick? Jesus! Fuck you!

  They were hearing him out only to humor him. Jan was incensed at the comment, but not really surprised. Here he was, in the middle of a catastrophe, and the guys in Washington, sitting safely in a plush office, were telling him to make it quick?

  “Yeah, well, obviously the earthquakes have increased—”

  “We’ve heard. Throughout the region,” another voice said, interrupting Jan. “Nothing too damaging, I guess, but it can’t be a good thing.”

  “There’s no reason to think that it’s even related,” a third voice broke in.

  Jan picked up where he left off. He was infuriated. Nothing too damaging?! Still, he stayed on point.

  “The readings from the gauges have fluctuated wildly. Some of the receptors aren’t even reporting anymore. Damaged, and it’s not just the quakes. They closed Yellowstone. Somebody was killed near the geysers, things are changing here.”

  The third voice spoke again. “Right, but, Jan, like I said before, there’s no reason to think that any of this means anything. Those readings have always fluctuated, ever since we started monitoring them ten years ago. These things come in swarms. Even you know that. Besides, we planned for a modest amount of collateral damage. We chose you because you said you could deal with that.”

  Silence. Jan tried a couple of deep breaths, but it didn’t help.

  They think you’re stupid. That you can’t see this for what it is.

  Jan slammed his fist on the desk hard enough that they could hear it over the wire. “I’m not talking about fucking collateral damage, Michael! I’m talking about destruction and chaos greater than anything we ever imagined. Data can only tell you so much. What you’re not taking into account is the experience, just being here—the ground out there is boiling!” He looked out the picture windows and down on the park. “There’s steam shooting from the ground! Shit, the earthquakes are the least of our worries. The ground out here looks like it could turn inside out, swallow itself, and suck the whole country into a pool of lava.”

  Jan paused to let it sink in. The men were silent, so he continued. “That’s assuming the whole fucking thing doesn’t erupt!” If it were up to Jan, he would have pulled the plug earlier. However, the men in Washington had taken that decision out of his hands.

  Jan could sense the effect on the room through the wire. He could hear their nervous chatter. They were trying to reassure themselves. “He’s a lunatic,” he heard one say. “Been up in that house alone too long.”

  Finally, the crowd quieted down and a single voice spoke. “Jan, I know that you are under pressure out there. You can’t cry wolf at the slightest bump in the road—”

  “Cry wolf? This is the same . . . no, worse than Switzerland. And they were smart enough to shut that down!”

  “A different time, a different place. Different technology. There’s no reason to think it’s the same. We were told you could deal with this type of situation. Stay calm and wait for more instructions. That’s all for now.”

  Fucking imbeciles!

  Jan slammed the phone down onto its base. The plastic cradle cracked from the force and the handset rolled off onto the desk. A faint dial tone came from the earpiece. He yanked the cord out to stop the noise. Then he walked quickly over to his personal laptop on the far end of the desk. It was already open. He banged the space key to awaken it. The Internet browser was open and on the screen was an article from the BaselPress.

  Jan had found the article a few weeks earlier in the archives section of the website. Conveniently enough, nobody on the project had ever mentioned Switzerland to him.

  Although it only made him more anxious, he kept finding himself rereading the piece. Mostly, he wanted to double-check the details. Make sure he wasn’t missing something that might distinguish the two events. He might have only one more chance to stop the pr
oject.

  This time, Jan closed the article without as much as a skim. He shut the laptop and brought his hands up to his face. He exhaled, not realizing he’d been holding his breath for the last minute or so.

  There was no need to read the article again because he knew all the facts: 3.1s and up. Nothing really major, but they were in clusters. A series of quakes just like the one that was plaguing the greater Yellowstone area now. The cause was identical, too. The Swiss project intended to harvest energy from deep within the earth. They were looking for hot dry rock, or HDR. The same type that was currently under Jan’s feet.

  The Swiss had drilled five thousand meters into the rock below the earth’s surface. Then cold water was poured in the holes and pumped back up. The water, after flowing over and through 400°F granite, returned to the surface as steam. The steam was fed into generators and voilà: electricity. The scientists had found a way to create energy with almost no by-products. It was a miracle.

  The problem in Switzerland was that Basel was a historic hot spot for earthquakes and geological instability in general. Almost seven hundred years before the Swiss project, a 6.5 rocked the region. It was the worst quake in European history. Because of the region’s geological volatility, the fracturing and cracking in the deep rock that was necessary to the project’s success caused unforeseen activity. When the media started making references to the catastrophic 1356 quake, everyone demanded the project be shut down.

  The Hot Rock Experiment was taking place in a similar hot spot, but a more dynamic one, and that was exactly why it was chosen. According to the project’s scientists, nowhere on earth could produce the amount of energy that Yellowstone could.

  This much at stake and Jan considered himself the only reasonable person on earth who was aware of what was going on. At least in Switzerland they had the scrutiny of the public. The brains behind this operation were too biased to make reasonable decisions. Jan was the only voice of reason. There would be no protests or 60 Minutes specials on the dangers of the project. The men had gone to great pains to keep everything covert. Various federal law enforcement officials were trained in construction, rigging, and drilling. Government engineers supervised the work. These men knew how to control.